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By Wire servicesBusiness consultants that bailed out St. Louis' failing schools face public fury.
ST. LOUIS - The school district was broke - and failing. Half of all high-school freshmen quit before graduation. Less than 7 percent of juniors scored "proficient" on a state reading and writing test.
In desperation, the school board took a radical route: They handed control of public education to a corporate turnaround company from New York.
Alvarez & Marsal has a 20-year track record of restructuring companies in crisis, from clothing manufacturer London Fog to the Trump Casinos, from Liquor Barn retail stores to Arthur Andersen accounting. But its experts had never applied their business models to public education. The school board gave them a $4.8-million contract to try.
No other urban school district has offered itself up for such an overhaul. The result has been dramatic change and fierce public anger.
Since taking over the district in June, the management consultants have closed 16 schools, laid off at least 2,000 employees, rearranged bus routes and privatized services such as food preparation and textbook distribution.
In the process, they've infuriated so many parents in the black community that several civic leaders are calling on families to boycott the first day of school today.
"My wish is that no one would show up to school on day one," said Bill Haas, one of two school board members who opposed hiring the turnaround team.
One radio talk show host declared that it would be "child abuse" for parents to send their kids to school. Even the head of the teacher's union, though urging children to come to school, said she thought the quality of education "is going to be suspect" because the administration had poisoned the atmosphere.
The MBAs in charge of the district seem bewildered by such fury.
From their point of view, the 17-person team has been astoundingly successful. In just three months, they have cut more than $60-million from the budget without laying off a single classroom teacher.
The team is led by Bill Roberti, a former Brooks Brothers CEO who now carries the title acting superintendent. Pacing in frustration, he repeated again and again in a recent interview: Not one teacher laid off.
Districts across the nation have let teachers go and class sizes swell, but in St. Louis, Roberti has made sure that kindergarten, first and second grade teachers have no more than 23 students - down from 25 last year. He's also hired 94 "literacy coaches" to work full time on reading.
But many in St. Louis have made it clear they don't want schools run like a corporation. They want schools to be community anchors.
It might make business sense to shut down 16 schools with declining enrollment. To parents, though, those schools were often the only safe, stable haven in their neighborhood.
It might make business sense to privatize food service and custodial work. But to parents, that means hundreds of neighbors will lose jobs with benefits.
Even changing the bus routes has been contentious. Roberti is proud to have computerized the system. But parents complain that bus stops have been moved arbitrarily, forcing their kids to walk across highways or wait outside crack houses.
Still, for the next year, the administrative focus will be on the district's fiscal condition.
"I don't know if it will work or not. I do know that the status quo wasn't working," said Lana Stein, a political science professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis.
The biggest test of the new approach will come today.